Julien Boucher's world championship blog Day 2 and 3

Training last night went well. We kept it simple: long warm-up, followed by individual work: ball control, attack, reception and service.

It was the same story this morning. However since it was a birthday for Nic Cundy and Olivier Faucher both received some whipped cream pies courtesy of Dallas Soonias.

MATCH #1

There are many reasons why we lost our first match : it could be jet-lag, poor defence, perhaps a more experience Czech team. Final result: 0-3 (23-25, 22-25, 25-27)

Even if we didn’t play well we still kept it close. We even had leads in the second and third sets. Fred Winters played very well scoring 16 of our 50 points.

Tomorrow, the routine starts again. Training at 10 a.m. and the match at 6 p.m. This time we play in Chocen, a small town near Litomysl.

We are struggling with our internet connections so we apologize for delays in our reports.

Julien Boucher

Day 3 – September 15 - Litomysl, Czech Republic

I am writing these lines on September 16. We didn’t have a good day yesterday. We were either hit with food poisoning or a virus, I’m not sure. I couldn’t attend the morning training session, due to illness but I finally dragged myself out of bed to go to the match in Chocen. And now, Glenn is also feeling some stomach pains. The food here seems O.K. Let’s hope the players will be spared.

From all reports, the morning training went very well. Glenn split the group. Half the players did some weight training, while the others, the group that didn’t play so well on Tuesday, worked on reception-attack and vice versa.

Our second match was in Chocen, a small town 20 kilometres north of Litomysl. In a packed gym (250 people) we tried to make up for our loss the previous night. But for the second night in a row we couldn’t put pressure on the Czech receivers and attackers. Glenn started Dustin Schneider for Josh Howatson and Nic Cundy for Dallas Soonias. But nothing works. We are dominated by the star Czech player who end the match with 20 kills and four aces. He is a high calibre player who’ll play for Trentino, Italy next season which includes superstars Juantorena of Cuba and Kasisky of Bulgaria. The final score: 0-3 for the Czechs (19-25, 23-25, 19-25). Gavin Schmitt was our top scorer with 11 points.

The game plan for tonight: elevate our level of play, by playing harder and with more intensity

For the rest of the morning my main task is to find and internet connection that works, as the one in our hotel is useless.